Ex-KGB general: Soviet spy stood ready to poison D.C.'s water

By
Jeff Stein

A Soviet "sleeper agent" had orders in the mid-1960s to poison the District's water and to sabotage its power supply if war with the United States became imminent, a former chief of KGB operations in North America said Friday night.

The deep-cover spy was inside the United States around 1963 to 1965, "during the Kennedy-Johnson era," said Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB major general who is now a U.S. citizen.

Kalugin said he learned about the operation in the 1970s, when he was moving up the intelligence service's ranks. He would eventually become the KGB's youngest-ever major general.

Kalugin made the revelation during a question-and-answer session Friday at the International Spy Museum. It followed a screening of "Salt," a new spy thriller starring Angelina Jolie.

Afterward, Kalugin told SpyTalk that he had not previously mentioned the sabotage operation in any of his books.

No intelligence official from the period could be immediately located to verify Kalugin's claim.

Kalugin also said the KGB had only "a couple" of long-term, deep-cover agents here in the 1980s,when he was head of North American operations and controlled such infamous American turncoats as John Walker Jr., a U.S. Navy warrant officer who sold Moscow the communication codes used by U.S. submarines.

He called the 11-person Russian spy ring indicted here two weeks ago "a waste of money and time" for Moscow.